Brave Isaac’s Road
From Cover Kid Finalist
By Michelle McDaid Photography by Memories by Michelle | www.MbyMPhotos.com
Isaac Mello was a runner up in our 2014 Cover Kid Search with his cute, chubby-cheeked smile and curly brown hair. But at the end of that same year, life changed drastically for little Isaac when he was diagnosed with stage 3 Hepatoblastoma (a form of childhood liver cancer).
14 DECEMBER 2015 sacramentoparent.com
“It was December 31st and my husband had just left for work,” recalls Isaac’s mom, Rosselyn, when I interviewed her recently. “I decided to go and change Isaac’s diaper and, as I undressed him, noticed a tennis-ball shaped lump on his ribs that had appeared overnight. I shower with my boys every night so I knew it wasn’t there the night before. I was really worried.”
Isaac was quickly transported by paramedics to UC Davis where they did a CAT scan of his liver as well as blood tests, confirming their worst fears: he did indeed have a very large, stage 3 tumor, covering about 80% of his liver. The cancer markers in his blood were off the charts, and since the tumor was obviously very fast growing, they needed to start treatment immediately to save his life.
Rosselyn called her husband, Erick, who is an MRI tech at Woodland Community Hospital, and he recommended she take him to the ER immediately. By the time she reached the hospital with her older son, Christian in tow, Isaac had started to develop a fever. The doctors did an ultrasound and as an hour or more passed, Rosselyn’s husband arrived. It was then that the doctors and nurses, with worried faces, began explaining to him what they feared they had found.
It was New Year’s Day 2015 and everything had changed overnight for the Mello family, who live in Roseville. Isaac was to undergo six different rounds of intense chemotherapy treatments to try and shrink the tumor, some of which were going to be grueling, six hour treatments individually. The tumor was perilously close to the vena cava vein in Isaac’s liver and the goal was to shrink it enough to move it away from that vein and make it operable.
“My husband started crying and punching the wall,” Rosselyn told me, her voice shaking even now with the memory. “I didn’t understand at first what was going on. My son, Christian was crying and scared. They told me they couldn’t help Isaac there. He had a huge tumor in his liver and we needed to take him to UC Davis immediately for treatment.”
For four months, Isaac and his family shuttled themselves back-and-forth between work and school, the hospital, and home to sleep, for Isaac’s treatments. Isaac’s beautiful curls began to fall out in chunks and his healthy appetite dwindled to almost nothing. “He was throwing up every day,” shares Rosselyn. “He became so boney and he could barely walk some days because his knees hurt.”